How fast was the connection you were using to test upload speed? When I synced my collection to Amazon a few months ago their uploader consistently utilized >95% of my 1.5mbps theoretical upstream bandwidth.

"We've all been there: you've rushed out the door and realized you've forgotten to sync your phone. You were really looking forward to streaming that new album on the way to work, but now you'll have to settle for talk radio, or worse, an album you've already played out."

Your opening paragraph has an error. I'm not sure you understand the word "streaming".

I've tried Amazon's service, but it failed to recognise any of the 250 tracks I uploaded, so I think they need to work on their matching technology a bit. I will give Google a try.

But at the end of the day I don't find these services to be very appealing. I would much rather just copy the tracks to my phone, and not rely on the network. Typically I use my phone to listen to music when streaming is not really an option (e.g. on the train, plane, beach etc.).

Why Xbox Music isn't in the list? It can also stream your matched music, with no song limit (but only if matched - about half my music is there).

But the majority of users are going to be with one of those three. I haven't even considered WP7/8 but the entry price for a Windows Tablet at the moment is prohibitively expensive compared to the offerings from Android makers and Apple.

Edit: The biggest pain I had with Google Music (was in the beta), was uploading all my music from the beginning on my Macbook Pro. After that I just left music manager running and it would work pretty quick if I purchased some more music from iTunes. Personally I like Google Music because of my current selection of phone/tablet, but if I went to the iPhone switching all of that would be a massive pain. I didn't read the article in depth, but was there mention of Google Music being an app on the iPhone?

I use iTunes match and Google Play or my music backups. It's been my experience they had a similar rate of not matching my music collection of almost 7900 tracks, albeit for different albums/songs.

The sporadic matching of iTunes Match is certainly jarring. As an example, the Beatles "1" album uploads 9 out of the 27 tracks and matches the remaining 18. This is a clean rip from a a CD to MP3 of an album they sell in the iTunes store. I really hope Apple improves the matching capabilities of iTunes because it's downright schizophrenic how it does it now.

I've tried Amazon's service, but it failed to recognise any of the 250 tracks I uploaded, so I think they need to work on their matching technology a bit. I will give Google a try.

But at the end of the day I don't find these services to be very appealing. I would much rather just copy the tracks to my phone, and not rely on the network. Typically I use my phone to listen to music when streaming is not really an option (e.g. on the train, plane, beach etc.).

You can save tracks to the local device with Google. Pretty sure Amazon does that too. I haven't used Apple's service. I like to save frequently listened to albums on the local device to cut down data usage and have an emergency stash for when I'm outside reliable coverage areas.

I went with iTunes and am glad I did. Also, Match is only anual if you want to continue to add more non-itunes tracks over time, or have a significant amount of cloud storage required for unmatched tracks. Once your tracks are matched, and then re-downloaded as iTunes originals in AAC format, they "become" iTunes purchases and are available for playback through iCloud with or without match, through the same system that allows videos and movies purchased on iTunes to play to your ATV.

I have 38K tracks, so the 25K limit was an issue. But, there are workarounds... First and foremost, make sure all your metadata is correct! Then, BEFORE turning on match, have iTunes run through and detect album art, and in the priocess it may update some additional metadata. When ripping CDs in, it is best to actually use iTunes to do the ripping instead of other tools, as iTunes uses it;s own online database instead of the CDDB for metadata, ensuring more tracks will match when run through. Purge down to about 20K tracks in iTunes, then match. Once matches, build a few custom playlists, start deleting matched tracks, and redownload the new iTunes tracks. Then, purge those from itunes, rinse and repeat. When done, add them all back to iTunes, and as long as you have less than 25K unmatched songs, all the rest will be iTunes downlaods and won;t count against you. This way, i sucessfully have all 38K iTunes tracks in the cloud, and I have turned off match so I'm not re-billed later. now 100% of my content is legal, and all I have to do is buy new content through iTunes directly, or rip and upload other content before my first year expires.

Now, as far as the value of having all that in the cloud? I put very little value on that. in a pinch, i'd rather turn on Pandora or iHeartRadio and listen to stuff I DON'T yet own than rehash my existing collection. At this point, other than my die-hard 5 star songs playlist (which is only a few hundred out of 38K songs), I don't even have music on my mobiles, and I can count on one hand the times I've cared to stream a whole song (vs a 90 second sample) to let someone hear a song I won they had never heard. The value to me is having 100% tagged music that going forward iTunes recognizes as "purchased" so next time they upgrade track quality, i'll be able to bulk upgrade my entire collection again all at once. It also got rid of all the sub 256kbit tracks I had and replaced them with 256AAC (which I actually prefer to 384MP3, AAC's audio range is wider and more complete, and outside of that, the ranges that both support, the difference is imperceptible even to experts on high-end gear, and 256AAC is a smaller file than 384MP3, not to mention, many of these tracks are "made for iTunes" which means they're studio edited FOR compression, ensuring more of the track is present after it).

I have an Android phone so it wouldn't work anyway, but what bothers me about iTunes Match is the limit. The same goes for Google Music but at least it's free. I wish Google would offer a way to pay for more like Amazon does. I also wish Amazon offered better online tag editing and the ability to change the artwork.

"Google, on the other hand, has simply decided to foot the bill by digging into its own pockets."

You have to log into your Google account to access your music, thus allowing Google to track your listening, browsing, search, and all the other things that make you Google's end product. Nothing is free.

I've been using Google Play for a while now and I'm happy with it, having all my collection always available is great. You need an internet connection of course (unless you tell it do download something to your phone/tablet), but here even when on 3G streaming is problem free.

One thing I don't like are the "mixes" it does for you. I have my music there and if I want something else I'll buy it! It's also a bit of OCD, I like my collection "clean", with no intruders in there.

As for the other two, I haven't tried the Amazon offer and I despise iTunes. All in all, very pleased with Google Play.

Why Xbox Music isn't in the list? It can also stream your matched music, with no song limit (but only if matched - about half my music is there).

I'd rather they not. Xbox Music's matching is buggy as hell right now and so far only supports two clients: Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

I still have cloud completely turned off because it duplicated every song it recognized on my phone and I can't afford to stream. Thank you Lumia 920 for having 32GB of internal memory. I still occasionally stream new music from the store to try it out thanks to the Music Pass, but my entire library? Fuck that shit.

OH and rather than simply trying to fill in missing information, allowing Xbox Music to touch your files completely overwrites good metadata with piss poor data right now. Microsoft completely buggered up a good service (Zune) with a terrible replacement that's not being updated and fixed fast enough (Xbox Music).

I had some older MP3s in 128 and less and wanted to get them matched to get 256 versions of them. Sadly, both Google Play and iTunes Match failed to match most of them (about 85-90%). I may have to try to get Amazon to match the ones the other 2 didn't.

There is a crucial bit of information that should be mentioned as part of Apple's Music Match service; the 90 day blackout period for all devices (ios devices, or computers with iTunes) logged into a Music Match account. I hadn't performed my due-diligence and am paying the price for it.

As part of iTunes Match, every user gets to re-download all matched songs during the subscription period. In order to prevent piracy whereas little Johnny goes to Jimmy's house and re-downloads his entire collection to share it, Apple has introduced a black-out period of 90 days.

What it means is that if I sign into my iTunes Match enabled account (Account "A") on any device, and I then switch to another iTunes account (Account "B") then I am unable to download any past purchases (Music, books, videos, etc.) from Account B for 90 days!

As somebody with two iTunes accounts, one US from my days living there, and another from the UK store, I now find that I am locked out of my own account which means no re-downloads.

This is a major deal killer for me, and the internet forums say that the only solution is to Cancel my iTunes Match subscription with Apple (only possible over the phone), this still doesn't reset your 90 period so you are stuck anyway.

So iTunes Match is not recommended if you have more than one account. Google Music has all my love instead. Thanks for not telling me Apple.

"Amazon's Cloud Player would always require an extra step and it's not a native application for either Android or iOS" -- Deeply confused. I have the Amazon Cloud Player app on my iPhone and iPad and I use it every day.

Worth noting: iTunes Match works in Canada, as does Amazon Cloud Player (though you can't actually buy MP3s from Amazon outside of the US). Google Play Music doesn't work at all.

I don't know how it works for other non-US countries, but iTunes seems to be the one that works regardless of where you are. If I recall, Amazon's international availability is dicey (sometimes you need to VPN to see your own stuff) and Google's is flat-out non-existent.

ETA: I'd like to see 7digital offer this kind of service. Like Apple, they seem to recognize a world outside American borders.

I don't have any problems sharing an itunes library via itunes match between my mac (host system where i keep all my music) and my windows PC.

Sadly, my iphone (not jailbroken) *frequently* has problems streaming music from the cloud. I have many *many* albums where songs are will play the first half of the track, and then the second half of the track will be the next song.This is very frustrating.

I spent a few weeks going back and forth with Apple support over this listing 30+ albums that exhibited this problem.

Their solution was to say "our engineers are working on it" and give me 10 song credits.

My work around is to turn off itunes match on my phone, copy over the music I *know* I want to listen to and is broken, and then I can turn match back on again for the other stuff.

The one problem I have with Google Music is it fails to automatically scan and upload any new mp3s added to your music location. I have to delete, re add and rescans my music partition to get new mp3s uploaded. Not sure when this option actually works. I mostly get mp3s from eMusic, which are downloaded straight to my music partition.

"Google, on the other hand, has simply decided to foot the bill by digging into its own pockets."

You have to log into your Google account to access your music, thus allowing Google to track your listening, browsing, search, and all the other things that make you Google's end product. Nothing is free.

Sure, but how does that invalidate the statement you quoted? Your statement is the reason that Google is footing the bill.

Why Xbox Music isn't in the list? It can also stream your matched music, with no song limit (but only if matched - about half my music is there).

I'd rather they not. Xbox Music's matching is buggy as hell right now and so far only supports two clients: Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

I still have cloud completely turned off because it duplicated every song it recognized on my phone and I can't afford to stream. Thank you Lumia 920 for having 32GB of internal memory. I still occasionally stream new music from the store to try it out thanks to the Music Pass, but my entire library? Fuck that shit.

OH and rather than simply trying to fill in missing information, allowing Xbox Music to touch your files completely overwrites good metadata with piss poor data right now. Microsoft completely buggered up a good service (Zune) with a terrible replacement that's not being updated and fixed fast enough (Xbox Music).

Sounds like a great reason to put it on the list. They don't have to recommend it to include it, but it might be helpful to some who use Win8 phones.

iTunes Match does not offer the ability to download an entire library at once, though it does allow you to download tracks and albums individually.

And playlists, so (with a little imagination) you can probably get the entire library. I have a 'recent additions' playlist, so all additions can be downloaded and backed up. Although the smart money would be on my backup failing before Apple's.

Edit: or just do what Nephilim2038 says. Which I've done myself, now I think about it.

The one problem I have with Google Music is it fails to automatically scan and upload any new mp3s added to your music location. I have to delete, re add and rescans my music partition to get new mp3s uploaded. Not sure when this option actually works. I mostly get mp3s from eMusic, which are downloaded straight to my music partition.

I've noticed Music Manager doesn't detect right away if I have new music in my local music folder. I have to leave it running a while, a few minutes, then go back in and it'll then show xx new tracks ready for uploading (I disabled the auto upload option iirc)

Google Music and Amazon MP3 users can also download individual songs and albums for offline use—a nice feature for when you’re venturing into an area without service and want to bring along a few choice albums. For iTunes Match users, the iPhone's Music app features a download feature for songs that have only been stored in the cloud and are not on the device's internal memory.

iTunes is no different to Google Music or Amazon as far as I can tell, or am I missing something?

I had some older MP3s in 128 and less and wanted to get them matched to get 256 versions of them. Sadly, both Google Play and iTunes Match failed to match most of them (about 85-90%). I may have to try to get Amazon to match the ones the other 2 didn't.

I'm not sure if Amazon matched any of my 128k cd rips. If it did the fraction was low enough that after looking at the total bandwidth I used for uploads I concluded that the match service required binary equality and only worked with mp3s I purchased from them directly or that someone else had already uploaded. (All of my music is either amazon mp3s or self ripped.)

So when are these services going to be forced by the RIAA to give up the goods on pirated tracks? Since Congress is beholden to the RIAA, I would not be surprised if it is mandated by the government that they have to comply. Then again, it may be like torrents and you would be up to the whims of large numbers and random chance.

One thing to note: Google converts every non-MP3 upload to 320kps MP3, which sucks if you ripped your CDs to AAC. Presumably this is some sort of issue with licensing the codec.

Google needs to encourage the perception that MP3s are universal, because it's older, despite the licensing fee involved for them to [legally] encode or stream. AAC is open source for creation and streaming; you only need a license for making or developing your own AAC codec flavor.

Regarding the sound quality, don't sweat it. After you've taken a good file and already thrown most of it away during the first lossy transcode, it's not like making it even worse later should be much concern. No one concerned with sound quality is going to use any of these cloud services, let alone allow a lossy file to touch their hard drive. You're only looking for good enough, which is what all 3 services deliver.

The one problem I have with Google Music is it fails to automatically scan and upload any new mp3s added to your music location. I have to delete, re add and rescans my music partition to get new mp3s uploaded. Not sure when this option actually works. I mostly get mp3s from eMusic, which are downloaded straight to my music partition.

I have never had it fail to upload a new song, but I have had it take hours to decide to do so. I have also had one instance where it uploaded the song immediately but it did not appear in my GM library till the following day.

Has anyone else had issues with the Amazon music importer? For me, it crashes (more specifically, the native "helper" crashes) almost immediately after starting to go through the upload unless I select a small number of songs (around 100). Amazon support has been no help at all so far, and I'm at my wits' end trying to figure it out.

I only have like 6000 songs in my library, so it shouldn't be stressing the software THAT much, but without fail it crashes almost immediately. The service is unusable for me at this point, as I can't do a bulk upload, and doing dozens upon dozens of small uploads is out of the question.

"Google, on the other hand, has simply decided to foot the bill by digging into its own pockets."

You have to log into your Google account to access your music, thus allowing Google to track your listening, browsing, search, and all the other things that make you Google's end product. Nothing is free.

Sure, but how does that invalidate the statement you quoted? Your statement is the reason that Google is footing the bill.

That was my point. In other words, Google is paying you $25 to get you to log in so they can eventually sell the data they gather on you. You "pay" by giving them this data for free. I don't think this exchange of data for future profit is obvious to many users.

Worth noting: iTunes Match works in Canada, as does Amazon Cloud Player (though you can't actually buy MP3s from Amazon outside of the US). Google Play Music doesn't work at all.

I don't know how it works for other non-US countries, but iTunes seems to be the one that works regardless of where you are. If I recall, Amazon's international availability is dicey (sometimes you need to VPN to see your own stuff) and Google's is flat-out non-existent.

ETA: I'd like to see 7digital offer this kind of service. Like Apple, they seem to recognize a world outside American borders.

You're completely correct in identifying this glaring deficiency with Google's implementation. However, as an FYI, it's trivially simple to get around it. Just turn on your VPN of choice, point it to an American IP address, go to music.google.com, and download the client. That's it. You can turn off the VPN at that point, and it will work fine with uploading, matching, downloading, etc from your Canadian IP address. It only performs the geolocation check when you're first downloading the client.

Disclosure: I'm Canadian and did this about six months ago. Works like a charm.

iTunes Match was great... until iOS6, when they removed the ability to delete tracks that you've downloaded from the cloud from your device. I suppose that sort of extra simplicity is fine if you've got a tiny music library, but for most people I know, whose libraries decently outstrip the storage available on their device, that makes the entire system pretty useless.

The granularity in iOS5 meant that I could delete an old album to make room for a new one I wanted to listen to, and then just download it from the cloud, while maintaining free space for new apps and photos and whatnot. While iCloud streaming in iOS6 is supposed to handle this behind the scenes for new music (and does, generally), when other OS features (apps, photos, video) bump up against the storage limit, the only option you have for culling music is to delete all music on the device. That's... pretty terribly designed.

So I'm back to the point now of leaving Match disabled on my iPhone, and syncing music manually. Match went from basically one of the best features I'd ever used, to entirely useless to me with the removal of the ability to delete individual downloaded tracks.

Google Music doesn't seem to do very well at matching. Most of my music library is from a month long stint of ripping CDs I had collected over two decades. So maybe I didn't label my songs properly when I ripped them many years ago. A vast majority of it is popular music that virtually every online music store has available, yet it still spends time uploading them instead of matching them. I have less than 10,000 songs and it still takes days to upload.

"Google, on the other hand, has simply decided to foot the bill by digging into its own pockets."

You have to log into your Google account to access your music, thus allowing Google to track your listening, browsing, search, and all the other things that make you Google's end product. Nothing is free.

How's that different that what Apple and Amazon are doing, other than they are getting you to pay them to track your listening, browsing, searching, etc?